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mercer@catholicvote.org‘Spotlight’: Has the Church-Scandal Movie Victimized an Innocent Man? (VIDEO)https://www.catholicvote.org/spotlight-has-the-church-scandal-movie-victimized-an-innocent-man-video/
https://www.catholicvote.org/spotlight-has-the-church-scandal-movie-victimized-an-innocent-man-video/#commentsSun, 29 Nov 2015 17:43:53 +0000http://www.catholicvote.org/?p=69815I’ve seen the feature film “Spotlight,” currently in theaters, which portrays the investigation by The Boston Globe‘s Spotlight team that resulted in the breaking open of the priest sex-abuse scandal in early 2002.

Over at my Pax Culturati blog at Patheos, I lauded the film and expressed wonder at the benevolence of the Holy Spirit in maintaining and supporting the Church through this long Lent of atoning for her sins.

How is it that we still exist as a coherent entity at all, in the wake of what we did? Forget that the overwhelming bulk of the abuse cases are decades in the past, that we’ve taken huge steps to clean up our act, that other places and people do it, too – we’re Christ’s Pilgrim Church on Earth, and our priests put their hands on children.

Battered, bruised and broken, we are still here. Despite our worst sins, people continue to be drawn to us. We have moral standing beyond the faithful, with even people that disagree with us looking to the Church and the pope for guidance. And we still have vocations and converts.

…

The only real answer is this: We are the Church founded by Christ, who set the Holy Spirit over her to guide and sustain her. He has promised to stand with us until the end of time. Despite our best efforts to wreck the Barque of Peter, He remains at the tiller, and the Holy Spirit endures as our compass and North Star.

This should not make us proud. It’s not our doing. We are merely the beneficiaries of divine grace. We don’t deserve it, but it’s given nonetheless.

We should have destroyed ourselves long ago, and yet we are still here.

But, “Spotlight” is a scripted movie, not a news documentary, and one criticism I do have of it is that it’s unrelentingly negative. There are no positive portrayals of faithful Catholic lay people or clergy. Also, while the film ends with a painful litany of places where abuse happened, no mention is made of how the Church has responded to the scandals — not just in paying out damages to victims (which is only right and proper) but also in revamping education and procedures to prevent this from happening again.

More needs to be done, but the results can be seen in that stories of institutional child sexual abuse now come overwhelmingly from secular sources, such as public schools, sports teams, Penn State, the entertainment industry, scouting, etc. (click here for a long piece on the subject I did for Breitbart).

All that being said, it appears that “Spotlight” has done damage of its own, and not to one of the perpetrators.

In the film, Paul Guilfoyle plays Pete Conley, a fictional character who acts as a “fixer” for the Church, which is portrayed at times with almost Mafia-like overtones. He’s given a lot of the more ominous, threatening or dismissive lines — but not all of them.

Boston College spokesman Jack Dunn — also a graduate and trustee at Jesuit (but not diocesan) Boston College High School — is portrayed in a dramatic scene with Spotlight editor (and fellow high-school alumnus) Walter “Robby” Robinson and reporter Sacha Pfeiffer (Rachel McAdams), in which his character professes a lack of knowledge about a serial abuser at the high school and says:

In real life, Jack Dunn says, not only did he not say this but that after Robinson told him what the Globe had learned about the abuse by priests at BC High, he drew up for the school’s board of trustees a four-point plan to address the allegations with transparency and compassion.

“I proposed to the board that we create a hotline so alums can call in and report anything they know; hire an independent child advocate to review each case; report any criminality to the police; and provide counseling and compensation for the victims. There was input from others, but that essentially became the plan,” Dunn said.

The real-life meeting with Globe reporters, Dunn said, was cordial, not confrontational.

“We said we didn’t know anything, that there were no files,” Dunn said. “But we weren’t denying or minimizing anything.”

According to a video interview with Boston PBS station WGBH posted below, Dunn says an earlier version of the script gave the line to the fictional character Conley, rather than putting the words in the mouth of a real person (which is why fictional or composite characters are created in the first place).

“I left the theater and I was so overcome with shock and emotion that I threw up,” [Dunn] says.

Dunn says he is so heartsick because his actual role was to help the school reach out to victims and confront the issue with transparency. Many of the victims were Dunn’s classmates and friends.

“It was lauded by the Globe as a model approach, so to see it completely fabricated in the scene was just devastating to me,” he says.

It’s equally devastating to his family, including his son, a current BC High senior who Dunn says stepped up to defend his father when his class went together to see the film.

“As boys do they kind of looked around and my son stood up and said ‘I need you to know my father’s a very good man’ and that my son had to defend me for doing the right thing on behalf of people that I love on behalf of the truth has been very difficult for me.”

Dunn has hired a lawyer who has now issued a letter demanding that the scene be stricken from the movie and that producers admit this was a fabrication about him done for dramatic effect so that the focus can back where it belongs on the victims of clergy abuse.

It’s likely impossible to know the exact sequence of events and intent that led to lines being given to Dunn’s character that don’t seem to represent what actually happened.

“Spotlight” director and co-writer (with Josh Singer) Tom McCarthy responded to the Globe with an email that smells a lot like he consulted the studio’s PR and legal teams before writing it. He refused a subsequent request to do an interview that addressed the question directly (when poked in a sensitive place, entertainment types tend to pull their heads back inside their shells and stay there).

McCarthy wrote:

“We spent enormous time researching in depth what happened in Boston — interviewing individuals, reviewing e-mails, poring over court documents. The movie is based on real events and uses, by necessity, scenes and dialogue to introduce characters, provide context, and articulate broad themes. That is true of every movie ever made about historical events.

“We understand that not everyone will embrace the way they are portrayed in the film, but we feel confident, based on our extensive research, that the movie captures with a high degree of authenticity the nature of events, personalities, and pressures of the time.”

As generally fair-minded as “Spotlight” is, it’s evident that the Catholic Church is the story’s “big bad,” to which no quarter is given — and that goes for all the Catholics portrayed. That could be for dramatic effect or it may be that the filmmakers felt merciless toward the Church and allowed that to bleed over into being merciless to individual Catholics.

If Catholics have learned anything, it’s that you can’t serve Truth with a lie. It’s long past time Hollywood learned that as well.

]]>https://www.catholicvote.org/spotlight-has-the-church-scandal-movie-victimized-an-innocent-man-video/feed/13Tenor Daniel Rodriguez ‘Would Love’ the Pope to Hear His New Christmas CDhttps://www.catholicvote.org/tenor-daniel-rodriguez-would-love-the-pope-to-hear-his-new-christmas-cd/
https://www.catholicvote.org/tenor-daniel-rodriguez-would-love-the-pope-to-hear-his-new-christmas-cd/#commentsSun, 23 Nov 2014 01:49:24 +0000http://www.catholicvote.org/?p=63480Unlikely as it is, Rodriguez says a papal shout-out “would be another dream come true. I’ve always wanted to meet the pontiff, to spend a moment, to be one of the people that shook his hand or be one of the people that was blessed.

“It goes to my Catholic upbringing, because my grandmother, she had pictures of every pope on her wall. She taught us to love the pope. She called him ‘El Papa,’ like a father. So he became that kind of God’s minister on Earth, the closest man to God, growing up as a young Catholic kid.”

The Brooklyn-raised son of Puerto Rican immigrants, Rodriguez became an NYPD officer, but because of his musical talents, he also was one of the department’s designated National Anthem singers.

The “Singing Policeman,” who performed in full uniform, became an instant celebrity, leading to voice instruction at an institute run by opera singer Placido Domingo.

Eventually, Rodriguez segued into full-time singing. This year, fulfilling a longtime ambition to record a Christmas CD, he created and found the financing for “A Glorious Christmas” (available for CD purchase or download).

(And if you’re in the New York City area, it can also be bought at Grimaldi’s Pizzeria under the Brooklyn Bridge, at 19 Old Fulton Street.)

The songs (some of which are lovely but not suitable for a papal Mass) are “Do You Hear What I Hear,” “Mary, Did You Know” (also released this year by the a cappella group Pentatonix), “I Believe (featuring Marla Kavanaugh),” “Where Else Would a Lamb Be Born,” “Christmas Day (featuring Shelea Frazier), “O Holy Night,” “Silent Night (featuring Karina Nuvo), “When a Child Is Born” and the original song “Lonely Christmas.”

Here’s a Latin-flavored version of “Silent Night” …

Rodriguez performs in concert at a variety of venues, including Catholic parishes and Protestant and evangelical communities. After singing before an Oakland Raiders football game on Dec. 21, in Oakland, California, Rodriguez will spend Christmas Eve at Shepherd’s Grove in Garden Grove, California. It’s housed in the former St. Callistus Catholic Church, which was offered to Pastor Bobby Schuller, grandson of televangelist Robert Schuller, after Schuller’s Crystal Cathedral campus was sold to the Diocese of Orange, becoming the new Christ Cathedral (now home to the former St. Callistus parish and school).

Although he was raised a Catholic, Rodriguez has a long history with the Schullers and the “Hour of Power” TV broadcast. His CD is also featured on the show’s official Website.

“I’ve been supporting that,” he says, “and a regular on that for some 14-odd years.”

When it comes to Christmas music, Rodriguez prefers devotional songs, saying, “‘Jingle Bells’ and all that stuff are cute, but ‘O Holy Night,’ ‘Some Children See Him,’ those things have the sentiment I like.”

One song on the CD has special meaning, and not just because he sang it with his second wife, New Zealand singer Marla Kavanaugh.

“My wife and I recorded a duet called ‘I Believe,'” says Rodriguez. “We wanted to put something on the album that’s how we truly felt, with everything that’s in the news. So, we had sung this song many times before, and the lyrics were perfect for how we were feeling — ‘Someday I’ll hear the sound of children in a world where war is banned. Someday I’ll see men of all colors sharing words of love and devotion. Stand up and feel the Holy Spirit, feel the power of your faith, open your arms to those who need you, in the name of love and devotion.’

]]>https://www.catholicvote.org/tenor-daniel-rodriguez-would-love-the-pope-to-hear-his-new-christmas-cd/feed/1Pentatonix Hails Mary on New Christmas CDhttps://www.catholicvote.org/pentatonix-hails-mary-on-new-christmas-cd/
https://www.catholicvote.org/pentatonix-hails-mary-on-new-christmas-cd/#commentsTue, 18 Nov 2014 02:52:58 +0000http://www.catholicvote.org/?p=63389Ready it or not, it’s the Christmas season — and it’s fitting that one of the first bits of new music honors the woman who made it all possible.

It’s true that, on balance, Catholics spend a great deal more time thinking and talking about — let alone praying t0 — Mary, the Mother of God, than your average Protestant or Evangelical.

But especially at this time of year, the enormity of the idea that a (probably) teenage Jewish girl from an obscure town in a dusty corner of the Roman Empire held the Creator of the Universe within her womb and brought Him forth as an infant into the world in a humble stable just can’t be ignored.

In 1984, at the request of his pastor, Texas-born gospel singer, songwriter and comedian Mark Lowry wrote the lyrics to the song “Mary, Did You Know?” as lines for a script for a Christmas play (now also a book by the same name). Twelve years later, musician and songwriter Budd Greene took Lowry’s series of questions to Our Lady and put them to music.

The questions include:

Mary did you know that your baby boy will give sight to a blind man?Mary did you know that your baby boy will calm a storm with his hand?Did you know that your baby boy has walked where angels trod?And when your kiss your little baby, you have kissed the face of God.

The song has been recorded by more than 30 artists, from Kenny Rogers to Cee Lo Green to Clay Aiken, but earlier this month, it took a shimmering and haunted turn when the a cappella group Pentatonix — Kirstie Maldonado, Mitch Grassi, Scott Hoying, Avi Kaplan and Kevin Olusola — released its video for the song, one track on its new “That’s Christmas to Me” CD.

It features the vocalists in a cave, perhaps reminiscent of the Roman catacombs in which early Christians had to worship.

Hailing from Texas and California, the five members of Pentatonix originally came together a few years ago for NBC’s a cappella competition show “The Sing-Off,” which has become a Christmas-season favorite (the new season premieres Wednesday, Dec. 17 on NBC).

After winning the competition in 2011 and scoring a recording contract, Pentatonix has continued to be purely vocal, powering through creatively arranged covers of pop and classic songs, along with original material. In 2012, the band released “PTXmas” (re-released in 2013 as “The Deluxe Edition,” with two additional tracks), including “Little Drummer Boy,” and the Advent hymn “O Come, O Come Emmanuel,” with lead vocals by Kaplan, who sings basso profundo (but whose range stretches to tenor) and does percussion.

With two Christmas albums to their credit, you might wonder whether the members of Pentatonix are believers (although that’s certainly no prerequisite for performing Christmas music). Well, beat boxer and vocalist Olusola, who also plays the cello, identifies as Christian; while Kaplan has discussed his Jewish heritage.

In an article at Beliefnet, Olusola said, “I’ve always been technically a Christian, my Dad and my Mom, they’re both Christians. They raised me in it so I’ve always known of God but it didn’t become real to me until college when I really started digging in on my own and realizing that everything I do, if I’m not focusing on the word of Jesus Christ, it doesn’t [amount to anything]. Christ, heaven, those are the things that are everlasting.”

Speaking to the Jewish Forward, Kaplan said: “I’ve been singing about Christmas and Jesus, because all of that in choral music. I love singing Christmas music; no problem at all singing that.”

But, be warned, there is one lovely but peculiar song on “That’s Christmas to Me,” an evocative cover of Fleet Foxes’ “White Winter Hymnal’ (the official video for which is a kind of stop-motion-animation fairy tale).

And here are the words, sung as a vocal round:

I was following the pack, all swallowed in their coatsWith scarves of red tied ’round their throatsTo keep their little heads from falling in the snow, and I turned ’round and there you goAnd Michael, you would fall and turn the white snow red as strawberries in the summertime

“My dad was quite critical of organised religion, so we kids were never scuttled out to church. I don’t know if there is a Judeo-Christian God, but if there is, I wouldn’t blame Him for everything that’s wrong in the world. I suppose music is a devotional vocation for me, and even if you’re not religious that thing of aspiring to some kind of greatness can be a very useful tool. When you hear pure devotion, though– like Brian Wilson aiming to honour God on Pet Sounds– it’s a lot more powerful than the average love song.”

]]>https://www.catholicvote.org/pentatonix-hails-mary-on-new-christmas-cd/feed/16Is This the Most Pro-Marriage, Pro-Life Beer Ad Ever? (Video)https://www.catholicvote.org/is-this-the-most-pro-marriage-pro-life-beer-ad-ever-video/
https://www.catholicvote.org/is-this-the-most-pro-marriage-pro-life-beer-ad-ever-video/#commentsTue, 23 Sep 2014 01:45:11 +0000http://www.catholicvote.org/?p=62062I haven’t seen every beer ad ever, so I really don’t have an answer to the above question, but I do know that this Miller Lite ad gets everything in the right order …

]]>https://www.catholicvote.org/is-this-the-most-pro-marriage-pro-life-beer-ad-ever-video/feed/3Colbert, O’Brien, Kimmel, Fallon, Daly, Gutfeld, Wilmore — Catholics Rule the Nighthttps://www.catholicvote.org/colbert-obrien-kimmel-fallon-daly-gutfeld-wilmore-catholics-rule-the-night/
https://www.catholicvote.org/colbert-obrien-kimmel-fallon-daly-gutfeld-wilmore-catholics-rule-the-night/#commentsFri, 16 May 2014 15:00:39 +0000http://www.catholicvote.org/?p=60010Catholics who think their values are underrepresented in the media are probably right, but that’s not for a lack of baptized Catholics in front of the cameras — at least in latenight TV.

Since, on “The Colbert Report,” the Second City alumnus was playing a parody of a right-wing talk show host (sort of a Bill O’Reilly-lite) and not himself, it’s hard to say exactly what we’ll get when he settles into the CBS host chair.

But one thing we do know for sure about the real Stephen Colbert is that he’s a practicing Catholic. He’s discussed his faith on his show and in several other venues (this story lists a bunch of those), he’s taught catechism classes, and he even lovingly roasted both Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York and Pope Francis at last year’s Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner.

When Colbert got the CBS gig, Jesuit priest Father James Martin tweeted, “Congratulations to my friend Stephen Colbert @StephenAtHome on his new gig. Couldn’t have happened to a better Catholic!”

Apparently, according to an article in Time magazine, Martin has been praying for Colbert since at least 2010 and is the official chaplain of “The Colbert Report.”

Colbert was also the subject of Feb. 3, 2014 feature in the Jesuit magazine America, called “Truth and Truthiness: What Catholic Catechists Can Learn From Stephen Colbert” (“truthiness” is one of Colbert’s catchphrases).

And who could forget this?

You may say, ‘Finally, we have a Catholic in latenight TV instead of all these godless heathens!”

Someone hasn’t been paying attention.

Catholics own latenight and have for a while. Now, nobody’s saying these guys are all bastions of piety and orthodoxy. In some cases, far from it. All we know for sure is they’re baptized Catholics and were raised, to one degree or another, in Catholic culture. And we also know for sure that no Catholic, no matter how far they’ve strayed, is beyond redemption and reunion with the Church.

Obviously, I’m not talking about David Letterman or Jay Leno, who’ve never shown any particular affection for organized religion, but here’s what we have right now on Team Catholic Latenight.

Conan O’Brien (“Conan,” TBS): Briefly host of “The Tonight Show” before being ditched when NBC reverted to Leno, O’Brien was raised in a strongly Irish-Catholic family in Massachusetts, and was a Mass-going youngster. No word on where he’s at as an adult, but he has been married since 2002 and has two children.

Jimmy Kimmel (“Jimmy Kimmel Live!”, ABC): Raised Catholic in Brooklyn, New York, and Las Vegas, Nevada, this former altar boy told US Weekly in 2012 that his second marriage to longtime girlfriend Molly McNearney would “mostly be a family affair, and there will be a Catholic priest officiating.”

Kimmel has two children with first wife, Gina, whom he divorced in 2004 after a 14-year-union (no word yea or nay on whether there was ever an annulment, but let’s think good thoughts). Then he reportedly had a five-year relationship with comedian Sarah Silverman (who attended his wedding). After marrying in July 2013, Kimmel and his wife announced in February that they were expecting their first child. Waiting for that birth and baptism news!

He went on to say, “I just, I loved the Church. I loved the idea of it. I loved the smell of the incense. I loved the feeling you get when you left church. I loved, like, how this priest can make people feel this good. I just thought it was – I loved the whole idea of it.”

But when Fallon tried to go back to Mass in Los Angeles, it was an unfortunate experience (as it often is in L.A.). And listening to him, I’d put dollars to donuts he went to St. Monica’s in Santa Monica, but I could be wrong. Honestly, it could be almost anywhere.

He said, “There’s a band there now, and you got to, you have to hold hands with people through the whole Mass now, and I don’t like doing that. You know, I mean, it used to be the shaking hands piece was the only time you touched each other. Now, I’m holding hand – now I’m lifting people. Like Simba…

“I’m doing too much. I don’t want – there’s Frisbees being thrown; there’s beach balls going around; people waving lighters, and I go, ‘This is too much for me.’ I want the old way. I want to hang out with the, you know, with the nuns, you know. That was my favorite type of Mass, and the grotto, and just like, straight-up, Mass Mass.”

When it was announced that Fallon would be doing “The Tonight Show” from New York City, Patheos Catholic blogger Katrina Fernandez and several folks on Twitter made it their mission to alert Fallon to all the traditional Masses available in Gotham.

Married since 2007 to film producer Nancy Juvonen, Fallon is the father of a daughter born in 2013 via a gestational surrogate.

Carson Daly (“Last Call With Carson Daly,” NBC): A Irish-American native of Santa Monica, Calif., who attended Loyola Marymount University, Daly reportedly briefly pondered the priesthood. As quoted on Backstage.com, he says, “That’s been a bit overpublicized; it was just something I thought about. It’s an interesting story when a young kid who thought about seminary ends up at MTV playing Marilyn Manson videos.”

At the election of Pope Francis, he joined other celebrities in reacting on Twitter, writing, “I like the new pope. Opted for silence before he first spoke. Pray for me before I pray for you. Humble. #goodstart.”

Daly currently has two children his fiancé, Siri Pinter. No word yet on a wedding, alas.

Greg Gutfeld (“Red Eye With Greg Gutfeld,” Fox News Channel): Raised Catholic in San Mateo, Calif., and another former altar boy, the irreverent, smart and fearless Gutfeld — author of several books, including the recently released “Not Cool: The Hipster Elite and Their War on You” — used to occasionally say he was Catholic on his very-latenight pop-culture/comedy roundtable show, while also espousing his libertarian views, including strong support (and an endless string of jokes about) same-sex marriage. He currently describes himself as an “agnostic slash atheist” (it would seem you should be one or the other, but OK) saying that his religious beliefs have “faded away.”

And I haven’t heard the Catholicism mentioned in a while. He and wife Elena currently have no children. But Gutfeld does love his mom, so there’s that.

Larry Wilmore (“The Minority Report With Larry Wilmore,” Comedy Central, premieres in January): A correspondent for “The Daily Show,” the newly announced replacement for Colbert will be bringing the perspective of an African-American Catholic to latenight.

Growing up the son of a doctor around Los Angeles, Wilmore answered the Wall Street Journal’s 2012 question about whether he’s a practicing Catholic with, “I go to church every Sunday. I don’t agree with everything the Church says or does, but I like its traditions. But then I’ve been at odds with the Catholic Church since I was a kid.”

Well, hey, at least he still goes.

So there you have it, a representative sampling of the mixed bag that is modern American Catholicism, from devout to out and everything in between. Let’s keep all these guys in your prayers.

]]>https://www.catholicvote.org/colbert-obrien-kimmel-fallon-daly-gutfeld-wilmore-catholics-rule-the-night/feed/4How Far We’ve Comehttps://www.catholicvote.org/how-far-weve-come/
https://www.catholicvote.org/how-far-weve-come/#commentsMon, 20 Jan 2014 17:51:25 +0000http://www.catholicvote.org/?p=57267For the 41st anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Texas Alliance for Life has created a video recounting the progress of the Pro-Life movement. Despite many setbacks, the Pro-Life movement–our movement–is a story of hope and promise. In these last 41 years, we have slowly fought back and have won durable and lasting gains to protect the rights of the innocent unborn multitudes that are yet to come. Good will overcome evil.

“Along with traditional means such as witness of life, catechetics, personal contact, popular piety, the liturgy and similar celebrations, the use of media is now essential in evangelization and catechesis. Indeed, “the Church would feel guilty before the Lord if she did not utilize these powerful means that human skill is daily rendering more perfect”. The media of social communications can and should be instruments in the Church’s program of re-evangelization and new evangelization in the contemporary world. In view of the proven efficacy of the old principle “see, judge, act”, the audiovisual aspect of media in evangelization should be given due attention.”

By now, you’ve probably seen the video, A Nation Rises. President Obama’s moving speech in the wake of the Sandy Hook shooting tragedy acts as voiceover for images of children, infants, the unborn, and the actions of the pro-life movement. If you haven’t seen it, please take a moment to watch:

The juxtaposition of these profound, passionate words about our collective need to protect our children with images of the fight for the unborn is startling, coming as they do from the most pro-abortion president in history. It’s a work of cinematographic brilliance, replete with high production values, a moving score, and well executed edits.

It is, in my opinion, a perfect example of how Catholics can use new forms of media and social communication to accomplish, as Bl. Pope John Paul II called it, “The New Evangelization.”

I contacted John-Andrew O’Rourke, founder of Blackstone Films and creator of A Nation Rises to discuss the film, what it means, and how social media will help to advance the pro-life cause.

SS: Tell me a little bit about yourself. How old are you, where are you from, what is your religious background?

JAO: I’m the oldest of 9 children. I was born and raised Catholic in central Indiana, and after homeschooling through High School, I forwent college in favor of interning with Grassroots Films in Brooklyn, NY. Now, almost two and a half years later, I am 20 and have started the production company Blackstone Films.

SS: Your video, A Nation Rises, juxtaposes the speech President Obama gave about protecting our children after the Sandy Hook shooting with images of the unborn and members of the pro-life movement. Where did the inspiration come from to compare and contrast these themes?

JAO: After President Obama’s speech, which I did not see live, I noticed several different graphics and a video floating around on Facebook. They were all using the speech to call Obama to the carpet for not holding the same standard regarding protecting the unborn as he does regarding protecting children. However, it wasn’t until I actually heard Obama’s speech in the context of a LifeSiteNews video that I realized just how unbelievably pro-life his words were. They were (and are) strong enough to be the rally-cry of the Pro-Life Movement. Nothing I had seen to that point was highlighting this reality effectively, so I felt called to use those words in a powerful pro-life video. My coworker Tom Shannon had already filmed the March for Life in 2011, so I thought using that as our call to action was more than appropriate.

SS: President Obama makes an incredibly passionate and eloquent pro-life speaker, if one interprets his words to mean what the video suggests. Do you believe that the irony of this message in the video is making an impact on people who don’t equate being pro-life with protecting children? Does it have the power to change minds?

JAO: I think the most important thing is that the video is causing debate. It has given people an avenue to voice their thoughts regarding the issue of abortion, and I’ve already seen some who were shocked to realize that Pro-Lifers don’t “just care about the baby”. We care about all stages of life. While I would hesitate to call A Nation Risesthe silver bullet in the Pro-Life debate, I do think it’s an excellent starting point for discussion.

SS: Have you received any official response to your video from the White House, the Democratic Party, or any other pro-abortion political groups?

JAO: None officially, though I would love if the president got to see the video. ; )

SS: When I first came across your video a week ago, it had only 13,000 views. Now it’s at almost 200,000. What is it about this video that is resonating with people?

JAO: I think what resonates with people is the undeniable reality that we can’t leave abortion unaddressed, and that our president’s stance on the issue is hypocritical. It is completely unacceptable that Roe v. Wade has been the law of the land for 40 years, and President Obama has unknowingly lit a fire in the pro-life movement. We are quickly realizing that we are NOT “powerless in the face of such carnage” and that the politics are NOT “too hard.” If, less than a month after 27 people were killed during the Sandy Hook shooting, President Obama can begin enacting legislation against guns, then surely there is something we can do after 55 million unborn children have been slaughtered within the sanctuary of their mother’s womb. The fact that Obama is completely ignoring this while claiming that we need to do something to “protect our children” is infuriating to say the least.

SS: As someone who studied radio and television production in college, what stood out to me about A Nation Rises were the production values. It’s a very professionally-produced piece. How did you choose video production as the medium you wanted to use for telling this kind of story?

JAO: Since I was 5 or 6, I have felt drawn to video production. I see film as one of the most powerful mediums of storytelling at man’s disposal, and I am blessed to work in such an influential field. Consequently, after I first saw Obama’s speech, producing a video seemed like the natural next step.

SS: The January 14th cover story of Time Magazine suggests that since the Roe v. Wade decision 40 years ago, abortion-rights activists have been fighting a losing battle. Do you think that’s true? What role do you think socially sharable videos like A Nation Rises play in advancing the pro-life cause in our national discourse on abortion?

JAO: While I think the Pro-Life movement is making a lot of progress and winning hearts and minds in the process, I hesitate to say that we’re “winning” the battle. As long as abortion is legal in our country, we have a long way to go. We need to keep our eye on the final goal, which is living in a country where ALL life is not only protected, but respected. Videos like A Nation Rises help this cause in two ways. First, they provide a positive means for discussion and keep the issue on the forefront of people’s minds. Secondly, and just as importantly, they remind Pro-Lifers that the Pro-Life fight is not only necessary and influential, it’s also cool. The media often labels us as “radicals” and “out of touch with everyone else”. What I tried to portray in A Nation Rises is the idea that we’re in a battle, a battle for hearts, minds, souls, and lives. There’s no reason to be ashamed of that. In fact, it’s pretty awesome.

SS: What are your future plans for your production company, Blackstone Films?

JAO: We are currently in production on a 20-30 minute documentary concerning the Catholic Church’s teachings on Homosexuality. After that, we hope to produce some Catholic-themed short films.

SS: Is there anything else you’d like to tell people on the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade?

JAO: Not everyone can protest in front of an abortion clinic, join the March for Life, enact pro-life legislation, or make pro-life videos. But the most important thing that needs to be done to end Roe v. Wade is something that everyone can do – pray. I strongly believe that if every pro-lifer prayed and fasted for the end of abortion, we would see a greater change in public opinion than anyone could ever imagine. While politics and action may be the face of the Pro-Life movement, prayer is its strength. Without prayer, all other efforts are in vain.

President Obama is responsible for some of the most moving pro-life rhetoric I’ve heard:

This is our first task: caring for our children. If we don’t get that right, we don’t get anything right. That’s how, as a society, we will be judged.

[. . .]

If there’s even one step we can take to save a child, then surely we have an obligation to try.

Are we really prepared to say that we’re powerless in the face of such carnage, that the politics are too hard? Are we prepared to say that such violence visited on our children year after year after year is somehow the price of our freedom?

President Obama was, of course, talking about the Sandy Hook tragedy. But his words apply equally to the tragedy of abortion, legal in America 40 years this month. And when his heartfelt speech is applied to the images and action of the pro-life movement, well, I challenge you not to be moved. If we ever had a president who spoke like this about abortion, so openly, so passionately, so unafraid, it would be the fulfillment of our hopes and prayers these past four decades.

Please watch this brilliant video from Blackstone Films. Like this post, share it, spread it far and wide. This video speaks truth to power so eloquently, juxtaposes the hypocrisy of our concern for our children against the ongoing promotion of their legal slaughter so perfectly, it needs to be seen by as many people as possible. This has the power to wake people up. Let’s get this video millions of views.